I feel a song coming on....
"Oh what a night. One September back in 99. Opus demo was a joy to see. Thank you guys, oh what a night....."
Bloody hell what was I thinking of. Well on the 15th of September 1999, Dave and Geoff, gave us a demo in Opus5x. In a slightly different format, Dave went one end, Geoff went the other and we went wherever.
First off they showed us listers. Listers are a VERY important part of Opus. They are the gateway to your hard drive. Like Workbench they open up a window. Like Workbench you can view them in icons or name mode. Unlike Workbench you can have a tool bar at the top of the lister. Unlike Workbench, when you enter a drawer, you don't get a new window. You just move into the chosen drawer inside the same lister. Imagine. No more having to move windows around the screen the further into a drawer you go. The toolbar that sits in the top of the lister (you can have this off if you want) is totally configurable. This was shown by describing waht each of the buttons on the toolbar do. The first on the toolbar lists all the devices and assigns on the hd giving you fast access to your progs. The second one takes you back one step. The rest were explained briefly, but the first two are probably the ones you will use most. As I said earlier the toolbar can be configured how you want. This was shown by opening up the edit lister toolbar function.
So what do you do with the listers when they are open? Well, we were shown how to drag and drop from one lister to another. Opus really is geared towards drag and drop. Open a lister. Open up another. Find a file and pick it up throw it in the other. Real easy. Opus comes with a nice bit of kit called archdir. Find a lha/lzx file and double click on it. Opus opens up another lister and displays the archive. Really useful for looking at large archives and picking out the bits you want. Archiving files with Opus is just as easy. Just pick the file you want archiving and tell Opus you want to lha it. Give it a name and Opus lha's it. Lets just say a few days later you want to add to that archive. With Opus no problem. Double click on the archived file and copy it in.
Opus comes with ftp built in capabilites. This was difficult to show on the night without a phone line but open up the ftp address book and simply pick a ftp site from the list (you can add your own easily) and hit the connect button. Opus connects to the site and opens up a lister. You then open up another lister and simply copy files from the remote site to your hd. Its just like moving around your own hd.
Button banks are another great feature of Opus. Create a button bank and pick a program and drag it over the button and let go. Now to run the program all you have to do is click on the button. Its that easy.
There are so many things that Opus can do I could spend ages telling you about them, and I know only a fraction of what Opus can do. Buying Opus is like getting a new computer. Trust me. Putting Opus on your hd is like giving the Amiga a new lease of life.

Tara-for-a-bit
Paul.